Disposal methods by Planned Parenthood affiliates violate Ohio Administrative Code 3701-47-05 which requires that a “fetus shall be disposed of in a humane manner,” DeWine’s office said. The finding violation of state code, not state law.

“Disposing of aborted fetuses from an abortion by sending them to a landfill is callous and completely inhumane,” DeWine said in a statement. “It is important the public be aware that these practices are taking place at these Ohio facilities.”

“This is not true. Planned Parenthood contracts with vendors to handle fetal tissue in a respectful manner and in accordance with the law. It is irresponsible for the attorney general to say otherwise,” Kight said in a statement. If vendors are violating the agreement, “then I will take swift action,” she added.

“We are seriously concerned that this report is not the result of meaningful investigation, but instead yet another attack on women’s access to health care in the state of Ohio intended to end our ability to continue to provide safe, legal abortion.”

Of course, DeWine launched this charade of an investigation in response to the ginned up Planned Parenthood controversy this summer, where some blatant right wing ratfuckery attempted to convince Americans the organization was “selling baby parts,” as opposed to donating fetal tissue for medical research. And it’s not like that research ever led to anything useful, such as ubella, varicella and polio vaccines.

NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland pointed out that the findings of DeWine’s “investigation” were coordinated with a statement from Ohio Right to Life and a push in that organization’s efforts with state Reps. Robert McColley of Napoleon and Kyle Koehler of Springfield, and state Sen. Joe Uecker of Miami Township, to force women to fill out paperwork designating whether their “aborted baby” shall be “buried or cremated.”

From Copeland:

“Ohio Right to Life is clearly collaborating with the Ohio attorney general’s office to politicize how medical providers operate. The coordinated statements today from Ohio Right to Life and the Ohio attorney general make it clear that there is no division between an extremist political organization and the state’s top law enforcement agency. This is very troubling.”

Troubling, indeed. But not so much so that U.S. Sen. Rob Portman didn’t want some of this action.

“Disposing aborted fetuses into landfills is inhumane and reprehensible and should be stopped,” he said.

At least one Democratic lawmaker has stepped up so far to throw stones at the shrieking flock of flying monkeys.

“This harassment of Planned Parenthood and its patients is inexcusable. The attempt to paint the women’s healthcare provider as a lawbreaker is sad and deeply troubling,” said state Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent.

Probably the most absurd aspect of these attacks on Planned Parenthood is conservatives puffing their chests out in haughty superiority while asserting odious falsehoods and inhumane solutions to problems that only exist in their fevered imaginations.

Perhaps no organization is actively preventing as many abortions as Planned Parenthood is. Each year, Planned Parenthood averts roughly 500,000 unintended pregnancies through contraceptive education, and averts over 200,000 abortions through contraceptive services.

Want to see those numbers go up? Want to prevent more abortions from taking place? Provide Planned Parenthood with more money and more resources, not less.

Planned Parenthood’s mission is to provide men and women, many of whom are low-income, with critical medical resources and consultation unavailable otherwise.

Mike DeWine, Ohio Right to Life, Rob Portman, state Reps. McColley and Koehler, and state Sen. Uecker are not offering solutions. They are riding the ugly politics of shame and victimization to score cheap political points with the more mindless of their constituents.

D.C. DeWitt is a writer and man of sport and leisure. He has also written for Government Executive online, the National Journal’s Hotline, and The New York Observer’s Politicker.com. He is the Associate Editor of The Athens NEWS in Athens, Ohio. DeWitt can be found on Facebook and Twitter @DC_DeWitt.

Has anyone ever asked DeWine where he got his information? Portman probably is getting it from DeWine or McColley or Koehler but who or what is their source? Are they all just parrots who have escaped the rain forest?

sufferingsuccatash

DeWine’s hypocrisy is mind boggling. He is a raving homophobe and yet homosexuals have less abortions than anyone.

anastasjoy

A-fuckin’-men. DeWine is also playing a really dangerous game here, one NO elected official should be touching with a ten-foot pole in the wake of the Colorado Springs shooting. If there is a violent incident at an Ohio Planned Parenthood clinic, Mike DeWine should be tried for stochastic terrorism. A rational, level-headed attorney general — one who is not trying to gin up outrage for partisan purposes — would tread carefully, knowing the climate out there, and not say a word unless he had actual evidence that a law was broken. But we don’t have a rational, level-headed attorney general in Ohio.

sufferingsuccatash

You are exactly spot on—I thought the same thing that you did when I read the misleading comments of DeWine in the Dispatch. He’s ginning up the public against PP. The same is true of WOSU’s ALL SIDES with Ann Fisher who allowed, unchallenged, the woman who heads Ohio RTL to bloviate for 45 minutes about the cruelties of the heavily edited and untrue video made to discredit PP. The lady who heads Ohio’s PP was given the last 10 minutes of the show to respond while open minded Fisher took no calls the entire hour. Of course All Sides is a Dispatch/Wolfe outlet and Fisher is a captive of that syndicate, but this type of riot baiting aimed at women and women’s health care is outrageous even in this corrupt age of conscience free reality weaving. 10 up arrows for you and DC if I could.

Sy Colepath

This is nothing more than pandering to what seems to be the only people in this state that bothers to vote en masse; the kooks.

Robert Small

Before you criticize DeWine consider the fact you are supporting and funding with tax money a private, for profit business that actively promotes the killing of unborn babies and the selling of their body parts to the highest bidder. That’s without even mentioning Planned Parenthood actually being able to find, and contract with, other companies willing to “dispose” of the unwanted human remains.

mschmidt48

How horrible a politician who believes in the sanctity of life and trying to keep babies from being murdered in the womb! For every tax payer funded dollar that Planned Parenthood receives, it’s simply another dollar that’s already budgeted for other women’s health care that gets diverted to the abortions they perform. PP claiming that they receive no tax payer funds to perform abortions is simply a book keepers trick.